The Old Coot and the Young Cowboy
by UglyTurnip
Summary: For once in his life, Uncle takes a stand. For once in his lazy, miserable, good-for-nothing life, Uncle rides out into danger, if only to protect and aid the last Marston left alive. A.U. retelling of "Remember My Family" where Uncle was not present during Ross's attack on the ranch.


**So, this was a minor rewrite of a oneshot I posted last week. In the original, Uncle simply bade farewell to Jack and allowed him to ride off alone. After looking back at it, I kinda thought it would be both more interesting and more appropriate to have Uncle accompany Jack on his adventure, meaning this will probably be a small multi-chapter fic. I want to explore the relationship I think Jack and Uncle would have in this timeline, as well as provide a perspective on the dying wild west with a man who lived a long, lazy life in it. Besides, who doesn't like a little adventure?**

**If you've read this chapter already, not much has changed except for the very ending. I don't expect this story to be too long, probably around 10,000 words and 3-4 chapters, but we'll see.**

* * *

Uncle scanned the front page of the newspaper with only the faintest of interest. At the very top of the page, printed in gigantic bold lettering, the sentence "**Austrian Archduke Assassinated!**" practically shouted back at him. He groaned. He knew little about European politics, hell, he knew little about _American _politics, but to him, this seemed like nothing more than the press doing what the press always did: making a mountain out of a molehill. He had already read the article and reread at least a dozen times. It had only recently occurred to him just exactly how old he _was_. Not only was he unwilling to get up and do work, but now he very well couldn't find the energy to keep working for more than a few minutes at a time. Sometimes, dare he say it, he actually _did_ ache with the pain of lumbago these days. That got a bitter chuckle out of him almost every time he thought about it, but not today.

He glanced out of the kitchen window, towards the hill to the east. A figure holding a shovel stood over two headstones. His back was turned, and his head bowed. Uncle bowed his head, too. He had been in Blackwater at the time of the first headstone's passing, coming home to find the closest thing he had left to a best friend riddled with bullets and dead on the prairie he had wanted to live in peace on. That had been hard enough. Now, Abigail lied next to him.

Uncle's thoughts turned to Abigail. He had never liked her, if he were perfectly honest. She had always turned him down back in the days when she was a common whore for the gang, and she had always yammered on to John about why he was even staying with them in the first place. After John died, she had almost never even spoken to him, but neither had she ever kicked him out. She would just stare at him, sometimes with a glare that would've frozen even John, and sometimes with the sad frown of a woman who had lost too much and yet was expected to keep pushing forward. While he didn't like her, he did pity her.

She died this morning. She wasn't sick. She wasn't physically hurt. She didn't even kill herself. No, Jack just walked into her bedroom that morning, and he knew instantly that she was gone. Uncle frowned sadly in the direction of the hill. He never really believed one could literally die from a broken heart before, but if anyone proved they could, it was Abigail.

No, he didn't like her, but he did pity her. That was why, when he eulogized her after she was buried next to her husband, his words were nothing short of legitimate praise. In spite of her poor life, she had always been a good mother to Jack. If she was watching from above, he hoped she knew his words were genuine.

As for Jack? He had hardly left the hill at all today. He just stood there, shovel in hand, staring at the graves of his mother and father. The poor boy had just turned 19 a few months back. Uncle still remembered when he was just a kid, back when they first settled this land seven years ago. Things had seen so much happier back then. The West was dying even in those days, and the Marstons, ever the optimists, thought they could just let their past die with the frontier.

Uncle reached for the whiskey next to the paper. He gulped down about a quarter of it before he set it back onto the table.

The Marstons were wrong. He wished it weren't the case, but it was. Even in the year of our Lord 1914, the Wild West was still just barely clinging on to life in southern West Elizabeth and New Austin, but it would only be a few more years at the most before it would become truly extinct.

He glanced out the window again. Jack was gone. He was so lost in thought that he hadn't noticed him move.

About that time, the front door to the house opened up. Uncle glanced up from his paper to find Jack dressed up in some cowboy getup. That wasn't quite unusual; he had done that a lot after his father died. He guessed it was one of the few tangible thing that reminded Jack of his father, so he didn't judge too harshly.

What _was _definitely unusual was the gun belt Jack wore, as well as the repeater slung over his back. That was John's belt, and those were John's guns.

"Hey, Jack," Uncle tried to smile. He didn't. He wanted to smile more these days, but now that old age had caught up to him, he often thought about how wasteful and useless his time on Earth had been. Part of him had wanted to take it all back and do it over, and yet the other part, the part that loved and cared for the Marstons as if they were flesh and blood family, that part didn't regret a damn thing.

"Hey, Uncle," Jack sighed.

"Whatcha' doin' with all them guns on your person?" Uncle inquired.

Jack hesitated, staring at Uncle with a mixture of reluctance and worry. Finally he shook his head. "Uncle, I'm going out."

Uncle set the newspaper down, raising an eyebrow cautiously. "What're you talking about?"

Jack paced over to the window. "You see them two graves out there, Uncle?"

Uncle nodded. "Of course. I don't see what you're on about, though."

"You know the reason they're out there, right?"

"Jack, I-"

Uncle was cut off as Jack violently slammed a fist on the table. "It's that goddamn Edgar Ross!" he roared violently. "That government scumbag killed my parents. Well," Jack huffed as he turned back to Uncle. "Well, I'm gonna go give him exactly what he deserves."

Uncle's eyes widened. "Jack, you don't mean to say that you're gonna murder a government agent, do you?"

"I do mean it!" Jack retorted. "What would you do if a man had murdered both of your parents, huh?"

Uncle tried to speak, but the words froze in his throat. As much as the losses had hurt him, he couldn't imagine the pain Jack must have been going through in that moment.

Still, how would he forgive himself if he just turned back to the paper and let the boy get himself killed? He had hid from conflict for long enough; it was time to stand for something!

And stand his ground Uncle did. "Jack, you don't know what you're on about."

"I do, too!" Jack shouted back. "I know there's an evil man out there who needs to get what he deserves. I also know there's a lazy old man in front of me who just wants to drink everything away while said evil gets away scot-free!"

The words stung, but they were true. "Jack, what about me? You can't just leave an old man here all by his lonesome!" Suddenly, Uncle clutched his own knee and winced in imaginary pain. "Oooooh, Jack! My lumbago! It's actin' up. Please, you gotta-"

"Ain't nothin' actin' up, old man!" Jack shouted. His eyes locked with Uncle, and old man stared back. There was the foolish rage of youth in those eyes. Uncle had seen them in his father's when he was only a little older than Jack was today. It was the look of a man who hated the world and every single thing it had taken from him while paradoxically thinking he was something invincible enough to stop it. Naïveté. Maybe if Jack went off to some university, naïveté would've been alright, but those dreams were long gone.

Still, Uncle couldn't just let him go. He had been a lazy piece of shit all his life, but if there was one time, just one time where he had to stand for something, it needed to be now. So, making firm eye contact with Jack as he did so, he rose to his feet.

There were tears in his eyes, real tears, not the crocodile stuff he had used more than once to deceive people; these were as genuine as his own worry. "Jack. . . Please. I've lost Arthur, I've lost John, and now. . . I'm gonna lose you if you just saddle up and ride away."

Jack's expression, though still wild and aggressive, did soften a little bit. He glanced down at his, saw his crazy gunslinger getup, and for a moment, just the briefest of moments, Uncle thought he may have gotten through to the boy.

But when Jack shot him another look, Uncle saw only determination and vengeance in a contemptible sneer. He had lost. Jack was gonna die the exact same way his father had.

"I'm sorry, Uncle," Jack said, and he meant it. "I have to do this. If I have to die for it, then let me die free for once in my life."

Uncle glanced down dejectedly. "So be it. Can I at least do one last thing?"

Jack nodded.

Uncle threw his arms around the boy, no, the man before him. At first, it caught Jack off guard, but even though Uncle reeked like he hadn't bathed since the Van Der Linde Gang first dissolved, he allowed the hug to continue.

"I love you, Jack," Uncle murmured. "I know you ain't my boy, but I want you to know you were always family in my eyes; all the Marstons were. I can't say I'm proud of you for going out and doing this, but. . . I'll never stop loving you like an uncle should, ya hear?"

Jack nodded. Truth be told, he felt like a fool, too. Maybe he was plumb stupid for not listening to the more rational side of his brain, but he knew what he was going to do; his mind was made up.

"Uncle," Jack began, trailing off for a moment before resuming. "If I don't see you again, if I die like my father, I want you to know that the feeling's mutual. I'm sorry, old man, but Ross **needs** to be brought to justice. If the law won't touch it, then **I **will."

Uncle wiped the tears from his eyes. "You know your father would have never wanted this for you, and neither do I."

Jack gazed out the window, his gaze settling on the pair of graves outside. He nodded. "You're right, old man, he wouldn't. I guess it's a good thing he ain't around to see me no more."

There was an awkward silence, then Jack turned away. "Well then, I suppose I need to head out and do it."

"So you must," Uncle sighed, hobbling after him. The pair made their way out the door, off the front porch, and onto the edge of ranch property. A gray Kentucky Saddler with an old ragged bedroll on its back was waiting there. Uncle patted its saddlebags. They were full.

Jack climbed onto the horse, placing his father's old hat on his head. The sunset bathed the right side of his face in an orange glow. In that moment, Uncle saw the best and the worst of John within Jack. Then, Jack turned to smile at the old man. It was a genuine, appreciative smile, a silent thank you for all the years the ever spent together.

"See you, Old man."

Uncle smiled back. "Goodbye, Jack."

Then, Jack turned away. The horse began to canter away. Uncle watched Jack grow smaller and smaller along the southern horizon, then he watched the horizon long after Jack disappeared.

Glancing up at the twilight sky, a few more tears ran down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry, John. I tried. I really did this time."

Uncle stared up at the sky for a long time, seemingly expecting an answer. Something up there twinkled; Uncle felt something within him shift.

Had he really tried this time?

He turned to the barn, then to the horizon south of the ranch, then at the sky once more.

He snorted. He knew he hadn't done enough, and normally that wouldn't have fazed him. But not this time. He was an old man, damn it! Jack still had his whole life ahead of him. If he was going to go ride out on some sort of cowboy adventure, he couldn't be left to ride alone.

Running (or, in his case, hobbling) over to the barn, Uncle threw open the door to find his horse: a chestnut Tennessee Walker by the name of Nell V. His old horse, Nell IV, though it had been a hard worker and loyal companion, had unfortunately perished not long after the John had. Nell V, however, was young and capable, a stark contrast to the man to whom now sat on its saddle.

"C'mon, boy!" Uncle snarled to his horse. "C'mon! Giddy-up!"

Nell V snorted in response, but he obeyed, galloping out of the barn and down the trail in no time.

As he rode his way after Jack, Uncle gave one last look at the ranch he called home. What had he gotten himself into?

Then, suddenly, he brought his horse to a stop. His eyes widened in a sudden, grave realization.

"Goddammit!" Uncle shouted. "I forgot the whiskey!"

After a moment's hesitation, he shrugged the terrible tragedy off and continued after Jack.


End file.
